The Week

News

A city program that subsidizes taxi and van rides for the elderly and disabled is in disarray, leaving participants scrambling for transportation to the grocery store and doctor’s office, seniors say.
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We think we have problems in Berkeley with the University of California. The Planet has been deluged with irate letters from citizens who oppose UC’s newest expansion projects in Strawberry Canyon: a six-story nanotechnology laboratory plus a new office tower, with the excavation debris dumped into a creekbed to form a parking lot. Local residents are fed up with arrogant UC expansion, no question about it, but it’s even worse in Davis. The Sacramento Bee carried an article about a raucous recent meeting between UC Davis administrators, city officials and citizen opponents of UC’s latest project in that formerly sleepy agricultural town.
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Following a series of domino effects set off by the need for more student housing, UC is planning to convert Albany’s Gill Tract urban agriculture plots into Little League diamonds next spring. The farming space is currently used by the university’s College of Natural Resources (CNR) to conduct agriculture research projects.
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Getting a parking ticket in Berkeley is the psychological equivalent of being mugged by your local government, the same institution that collects a percentage on every dollar you spend within city limits. It’s a twice-inflicted wound because often when shopping you’re victimized by circumstances beyond your control. For example, you’re patronizing our downtown restaurants. The waiter, not wanting to intrude on your conversation, takes an extra few minutes before delivering your check. Then bam, when you get to your car there’s a parking citation on your windshield that exceeds the cost of your lunch. Suddenly, you realize you have been playing with a stacked deck. It’s next to impossible to have lunch and conduct business within the restricted time allotment of one hour in Berkeley. As they say in Las Vegas, the house always wins. In this case, it’s the entrenched bureaucracy in city hall where fringe benefits such as pensions and early retirement come to a whopping, additional 40 percent of a starting salary. It also comes with a guaranteed lifetime employment backed by powerful, public employee labor unions.
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In an age when electronic games have replaced classic wooden toys and independent toy stores have made way for mega-marts, Berkeley remains a haven for parents searching for traditional playthings for their children.
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I applaud Rob Wrenn’s series on Berkeley housing. I would like to add a few comments that may make the recent changes in Berkeley housing patterns more understandable. Berkelely’s preferred mode of new housing production is mixed-use developments that combine ground floor retail/commercial with upper stories of housing, thus furthering two important development goals, revitalizing our commercial/retail base and providing needed housing. To achieve these goals the city zoning ordinance permits significant increases in density, lessened project resident amenities (in particular open space and housing) and significantly weakened protections for neighboring residential zones. The laudable goals of mixed-use projects have been hijacked by clever developers and winked at by a complacent zoning administration that apparently has never met a project they didn’t like.
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Claiming that last-minute student fee hikes represent a breach of contract, a group of University of California students are asking for millions of dollars in tuition refunds in a class action lawsuit filed Thursday.
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Finding Saddam Hussein is “definitely the most important thing we have to do right now,” declared Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the wake of the killing of Saddam’s sons on July 22.
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In England, they shot the messenger. True, the death of British biological weapons expert David Kelly was a suicide. But if the reserved scientist took his own life, it was in response to the British Ministry of Defense outing and reprimanding him as the alleged whistle-blower behind the BBC's controversial report that the government “sexed up” its intelligence information to make the case for war.
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Think beyond the foul oil smell you conjure up when imagining Martinez on a sunny day. It isn’t always there, and a rather historic small town is. Thriving on pride derived from its famous sons, major league baseball’s Vince, Dom and “Joltin” Joe DiMaggio, and the city’s claim that the martini was born here, Martinez offers collectibles and antique stores, great parks and historic sites, of course surrounded by Shell oil tanks.
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The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley.
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For the past 15 years, longtime Berkeley resident Brenda Prager has made community art her public persona, both as a Berkeley arts commissioner and as curator of the Addison Street Windows Gallery.
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What is it about epithets that ticks people off? When a Planet correspondent called a city employee a “duplicitous insect” in these pages, we received a couple of tsk-tsk letters from other readers, including at least one who has been known to have even more colorful words in her spoken vocabulary. Now Fremont’s admittedly colorful Congressman Pete Stark, a hearty 72-year-old, has created an uproar in a congressional committee by calling a Republican colleague “a little fruitcake.” Mind you, this was after said colleague had told Stark to “shut up,” a phrase which was considered very rude when we were growing up. An acquaintance who comes from Congressman Innis’ district in Colorado reports that he has always been, shall we say, an eccentric fellow himself. Stark’s “fruitcake” allusion is probably derived from the expression “nutty as a fruitcake,” and could be therefore taken to be merely descriptive, except perhaps the “little” part, since Innis is twice the size of Stark.
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In a surprise move, the Berkeley Bowl grocery store has temporarily withdrawn plans to build a new store and warehouse in West Berkeley, raising questions about whether the politics of a union battle at the store are affecting efforts to expand.
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Are you like me? Or at least, like I was 18 months ago? I could name all nine of the Supreme Court justices and anticipate how each would vote on many issues. But our own nine City Council members? I could only have named my own and one or two others, and didn’t pay much attention to happenings at City Hall. I was aware that life had become less pleasant in Berkeley over the years, but I attributed it to wider social problems and not to decisions by city government. I was aware that UC Berkeley was becoming ever less warm and fuzzy, but wasn’t overly analytical about its growing impact on my quality of life. Oh yes, I always voted the “right” (meaning left) way—even licked stamps for some issues—but never investigated most of the actions of those I voted for. After all, I was busy with my own priorities, just like you. And then suddenly, one dark day…
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With the appearance of a 50-foot-tall flying cat and a 100-foot-long octopus, plus a world record attempt on this weekend’s schedule, the Berkeley Kite Festival promises that for two days, it will “fill the Bay Area skies with more than just summer fog.”
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If our city ever adopted an official civic rodent, there would be only one possible choice. No, not who you’re thinking about; I’m referring to the Berkeley kangaroo rat, Dipodomys heermanni berkeleyensis.
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The president and his party have cooked up the ultimate recipe for keeping political power. A nation in a constant state of anxiety—over the threat of terrorism, or a potential war—is a nation off balance. And that insecurity is the perfect cover to divert public attention from the country’s serious domestic problems and the administration’s political agenda.
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In the early 1970s, several unknown artists left their mark in the waters under and around the Bay Bridge. On wooden posts that jutted above the waterline, they mounted a series of wooden boats, trains and other statues. Though the “water art” frequently fell in high winds, or was swept away by large waves, it was often replaced within a few days.
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